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Drink

Lemonade

A citrus drink made from Seville oranges, lemons, water, sugar, and orange flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Lemonade

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemonade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the oranges and lemons very thin.

  2. Steep the parings in 2 quarts of water for 4 hours.

Make the lemonade

  1. Juice the 6 oranges and 12 lemons.

  2. Mix the juice with ¾ pound of sugar until melted.

  3. Add the steeped water to the sugar mixture.

  4. Add a little orange flower water and more sugar if necessary.

Strain and bottle

  1. Strain through a bag until fine and pour into bottles.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Seville oranges
Adds bitter, aromatic flavour and acidity, with peel oils from the steeped parings.
Lemons
Provide sharp acidity that balances the sugar and gives the drink its bright flavour.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the sourness of the citrus juices.

The step that matters

Dissolve the sugar fully in the juice. Sugar that is fully dissolved gives a smooth, clear syrup, while undissolved grains leave the lemonade gritty. Stirring until melted before adding the steeped water avoids this.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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